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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207176">where all light comes in</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09'>piggy09</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dimension 20 (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:55:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207176</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ayda has nightmares. Fig helps.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>183</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>where all light comes in</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I already had this fic half-written but after this week's episode...man they really do care for each other deeply and sincerely huh!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It turns out that if you’re a tiefling, and you go to hell – or, like, to <em>a</em> hell – and then you come back afterwards, your devilish immune system doesn’t know how to reset itself. Or something. Basically it turns out that Fig is super cold at all times, post-hell, post-archdeviling, post-…entire Nightmare King fiasco.</p>
<p class="p1">Thankfully, Past Fig was basically the smartest ever and managed to start dating a toasty, snuggly space heater. (The fact that Past Fig and Present Fig have managed to date Ayda is a miracle in a lot of ways, but all the other ways are so incredibly dorky that Fig feels a phantom skateboard under her feet the second she starts thinking about them.) Ayda sleeps sitting sort of hunched over, her wings cocooning her, which means Fig gets to curl up and nap in just about the best nest of girlfriend and girlfriend-wings she can imagine.</p>
<p class="p1">This also means that it’s very easy to tell when Ayda has nightmares.</p>
<p class="p1">Fig is asleep, dreaming about the stage or her tour bus or hell (or Ayda) (<em>not that she dreams about Ayda</em>, she is <em>not</em> that uncool) (and if she did dream about Ayda – hypothetically! – they would be really cool dreams and not just dreams where, like, Ayda flies Fig into the sky and they make s’mores out of clouds and kiss the taste of them off each other’s lips or something because that would be <em>unbelievably </em>dorky and Fig would never do it!) and then – there – a sharp jab of motion – and Fig’s awake, and Ayda is clawing at the mattress (thankfully, elven sheets give absolutely no shits about most kinds of damage), and her eyes are rolling like sped-up stars behind the thin skin of her eyelids and it’s happening again, it’s happening again, it’s happening again.</p>
<p class="p1">Fig twists herself around and crouches on the bed; the two of them are lit up by the flickering orange-white glow of Ayda’s wings and hair, and it’s too easy to see the contortions of Ayda’s face muscles as the dream punches her over and over. “Ayda,” Fig says. “Ayda, baby, I need you to wake up, okay? It’s a dream. Ayda. Ayda Aguefort.”</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda’s eyes snap open and she shrieks a harsh bird-noise. “Fig,” she says. “Fig you’re in trouble. The Nightmare King. He. Fig. Did it work?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Just a dream.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Just a – no, that isn’t – I don’t.” Ayda is shaking. Her hands fly up to stretch and pull at the skin around her mouth, checking for vines, and Fig feels her eyes tear up at the horror of it. She takes Ayda’s hands in hers, gently, puts them up against Fig’s collarbone. Her heart keeps a low bassline.</p>
<p class="p1">“Just a dream,” she says.</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m scared,” Ayda says. “Fig. Fig. I wanted to – I needed to – to see you, but, also. I needed to tell you that I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone. Here.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You aren’t alone,” Fig says. “I promise. I <em>promise</em>. We came and got you. I got you and brought you back here. Wake up, okay? Come back to me, baby.”</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda’s chest rises and falls in desperate gulps. She presses her rough, warm palms to Fig’s chest; lava trickles from her eyes, setting the harsh angles of her face alight. “You’re here.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m here.”</p>
<p class="p1">“And I am here.”</p>
<p class="p1">“We’re both here. In bed. Just a dream.”</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda blinks, sucks in one more breath. She unfurls her wings slowly to look around their room. (<em>Their room!</em>) (Not that Fig is one of those people who thinks <em>our room!</em> at stupid and unhelpful times, obviously—)</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh,” Ayda says. “Oh. I understand now. I was having a nightmare.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yeah,” Fig says. “A really bad one. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p class="p1">“<em>I’m </em>sorry,” Ayda says. She looks at Fig’s hands holding her hands, where they’re pressed to Fig’s sleep-shirt. She tries to pull away. Fig doesn’t let her.</p>
<p class="p1">“I didn’t mean to lose control of myself in my sleep,” Ayda says. Her brow is knotted up. “What’s frustrating about dreaming is that, at times, I can fail to distinguish the imagined dream world from reality. If I had known that was a dream I wouldn’t have been as terrified. Not that I was terrified, I mean unsettled.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Most people can’t tell—” Fig’s jaw splits open in a yawn partway through. “Fuck, sorry.”</p>
<p class="p1">“<em>I’m</em> sorry,” Ayda says again, sounding impatient with it. “You’re awake. You didn’t want to be awake. It’s before sunrise and you like sleeping late. Should I tie myself to the bed at night? I know Kristen and Tracker have frequently mentioned that they do that for each other—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Babe,” Fig says, “different reasons.” She reaches out one hand and ruffles her fingers through Ayda’s mohawk; the faint light touches both of them. “You can sleep tied down if you <em>want</em>, I guess…but how are you doing? We can just, like, hang out until you feel less shitty.”</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda blinks at her for a second and then snaps to attention; her wings jolt up. She says, very seriously: “I need to take notes.” Her hands tug against Fig’s hand. Fig lets them go and Ayda shimmies impatiently out from under Fig’s weight, dives for the side of the bed and pulls out one of her eighty million notebooks.</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda takes most of her notes in Celestial, which means Fig can’t really ever understand them. Even if she could understand them, which she can’t. Instead she curls up in the leftover warm patch where Ayda’s wings were. “Does Celestial even <em>have</em> a word for BDSM?” she murmurs into the pillow.</p>
<p class="p1">“I don’t know what that acronym stands for,” Ayda says, and she snaps the notebook shut. “And. No. I was thinking that if it were possible for me to lucid dream, I could simply affect reality so that—” she hops back over to the exact center of the bed and curls up into her little Ayda-ball. Absentmindedly, Ayda tugs Fig’s head onto her lap. <em>Mmm, warm, </em>says Fig’s brain; she lets her eyes lull shut as Ayda taps her fingers gently along Fig’s horns.</p>
<p class="p1">“—there wasn’t anything within the dream to be frightened of, therefore I wouldn’t be frightened, and wouldn’t wake up, disrupting my and your ability to get a long rest. Of course I wrote a reminder to begin studying that. Then I remembered that there’s a spell called Dream that allows you to affect the dreams of others, which I never took, because you can’t cast it on yourself and I was, as I’ve mentioned before, almost unbearably alone at the Compass Points. But now I have you. So I’ll look into the spell in the morning and then if you ever have nightmares I can help make sure that nothing in your brain ever hurts you. And that’s what the note was for. Are you asleep again?”</p>
<p class="p1">“No.” Then: “I don’t have nightmares.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yes you do.” Ayda’s voice curls in on itself and gets small. “You help me with mine. I can’t – I haven’t – I was scared I wouldn’t be able to help you. You saved me. In the forest of the Nightmare King. And then over and over again every time my unconscious mind pulls me back there. It makes sense that you would, you save people. This is only a very little kind of saving but it’s a way that I can help you. I want to help you, Fig.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I want to help you too,” Fig murmurs. She tugs one of Ayda’s wings closer; Ayda folds it over Fig like a blanket and Fig begins to carefully pick through Ayda’s warm feathers. Ayda lets out a little happy sigh when Fig pushes a feather back into place.</p>
<p class="p1">“Can I learn Dream?” Fig says.</p>
<p class="p1">“I don’t know,” Ayda says. “You’ve shown remarkable magical aptitude. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could just start casting it without any sort of research whatsoever.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Cool,” Fig says. “Then I’ll start picking it every day and I can cast it for you too. We can have—” (she yawns) “dream dates. Instead of shitty dreams about nightmare forests.”</p>
<p class="p1">There’s a moment of quiet. Softly, Ayda says: “I would like that very much.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Me too,” Fig says. She shifts around, so she’s comfortable, so Ayda’s comfortable. She swallows. “Also,” she says, “I don’t…want you to sleep tied down. I like sleeping this way. You’re warm.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Fantastic,” Ayda says emphatically. “I don’t want to sleep tied down. I don’t understand why Tracker enjoys it.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Technically I’ve already been older, several times over. Not to mention that I’m older than you right now.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Go to sleep.”</p>
<p class="p1">Ayda shuffles around and forms her little cocoon again. “I understand,” she whispers. “You’re deflecting because I’ve overcome your logic.” She leans forward and pecks a little kiss onto Fig’s forehead. “Good night.”</p>
<p class="p1">Fig smiles. “G’night,” she murmurs. She listens to the rhythm of Ayda’s breathing, so steady she could build a whole song around it. It suddenly seems so important to tell Ayda about the sudden exciting openness of everything – that they’re here, and they have each other, and they’re warm, and neither of them will ever have to struggle through nightmares alone.</p>
<p class="p1">When she opens her mouth, what comes out is: “We could eat s’mores.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Hm?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I said you’re warm,” Fig mumbles.</p>
<p class="p1">“Yes,” Ayda says. “Extremely. Also, I love you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I love you too,” Fig says. The air smells like ashes. She falls asleep smiling.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>In dreams I have watched it spin<br/>Seen the violent crack of atoms<br/>Where all light comes in<br/>In dreams I have lain in sin<br/>Just to be the cracked and the cared for<br/>--"In Dreams," Ben Howard</p>
<p>Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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